Copabanana
Well-Known Member
Yes.trying to recast this loss into something else. Finding a generativity in ourselves, an understanding of life of humanity that is bigger than our own immediate experience.
This is what M thinks. That my son never lacked for anything. He saw having as his natural right. Not by his own efforts. By mine. To create need, for my son, is just a signal for others, not himself, to provide. That is what M thinks.I don't know why our kids seem to have to do it this way, either. I actually think part of it is that they have never wanted for anything. They are not shamed by their poverty.
Except that no money is one thing. But what about the conditions that go with no money? Like no house. No food. No fun. No car. My son accepts these too. He could care less he has no drivers license. In fact, he says, he never again wants one. And never wants to drive. It is like he incorporates each loss and owns it instead of using it as a motivator to surmount and overcome. The exact opposite as was I.Literally, it doesn't matter to them that they have no money.
Daughter is that way, too.
Every single thing he loses, he acclimates himself to, and declares it the life he wants. Instead, of the reverse. Striving to replace it and get more, which is what I would do. I would have been desperate to get out of the hole so that I surpassed others.
Mine, no. I had a great humanity and empathy as a child. Now he is hard and mean. At least to me.Is this what our children are doing, too?
"...a cultural flowering and a great humanity and empathy."
I am not laughing.All I wanted was a doctor or writer and a freaking attorney. None of this flowering into empathy stuff.
That was a joke.
I am not sure the context of this quote. I will guess.Going down, do we declare our own names, for the time of reclamation? Do we sell ourselves out too, before we learn who we are and choose again, our initial values?
I think for me, I chose empathy and sensitivity and kindness...because in the heart of me, I was none of these. It was what they call a reaction formation. One adopts the opposite of that in oneself one most fears. In my case: rage, entitlement, competition, attention...I wanted to win...but I held myself back...because the winner's circle was for my mother and my sister.
I became the opposite.
Because we have killed off parts of ourselves..which we have never fully renounced. And the shame still makes it twist itself to be manifested. We need to identify it and to channel it cleanly and clearly and intentionally.Isn't that ugly.
How is it we get to such ugly places.
Yes.And sometimes, I am able to remember that these could be the trapped feelings fueling the others.
Could this be going on with my son, who is a martyr? That attention, winning, producing got twisted and is only expressed through his defeat? How will he ever get over it?
I slurped it up, shamelessly.("I know you ate food in there, Copa." Cedar hisses. "I just know it.")
M tried to help me out yesterday when the computer was broken. He said. My Goodness. The keyboard is full of food. I was only mildly ashamed. The rest of me was defiant. I love to defy him, in a childish and self-indulgent way. Just to be bad, bad, bad.
My entitlement is manifested by going to bed. Eating there. Triumphantly. Wrecking the computer. And mocking anybody who dares to question me.But we keep slipping into angry or entitled and wear fur and enjoy the sparkle of diamonds against our skins.
Yes.Maybe your buying was to recreate yourself as someone else, Copa.
I bought the equipment, the props for every single activity I could think of that had passed my mind to do. Photography. Painting. Drawing. Weaving. Spinning yarn. Crochet. Knitting. Embroidery. Needlepoint. Making socks. Fishing. Camping. Boating. Surfing. Open water swimming. Triathlon. Scuba. Kayaking. (Until I bought 2 Kayaks and I could not get in. I returned them.)
I had harbored the idea that I would sell a lot of it on Ebay. Until I found the never used wetsuits. They were covered in cat hair. I envisioned the Ebay listing: Wetsuits. Never used. Covered in fur. (Or washed only once, to remove cat fur. Never used.)
And then after I bought the props for the imaginary life, I started on my body. Shoes and boots and leggings and jeggings and sweaters etcetera.
And then I bought jewelry. (I had already many many scarves from the thrift store.)
Yes. That was the idea.When you became that other person, you would look and feel and speak in a way you judged as better than the current way.
And wanted to be, all those years past. That too.learning to incorporate everyone you might be, and become who you are.
And future ones too.It has something to do with incorporating past and present selves.
Yes.With that dynamic we have of now being not enough, and incorporating our better, future, more perfect selves to soothe the broken self of the present.
I keep trying to deal with the fact that here I am finally wanting to "be everything I can be...all that I can be (the join the Army slogan)...and I am this old thing. Gray. Wrinkled. Fat. Old. In paid. Lagging. Lacking.
This I do not understand.I think that matters as a piece of what is happening to us now as we forego incorporating a perfect future self.
Oh I get it. To accept ourselves as imperfect. As real. As not in role, but in real.We are learning (defiantly) to be who we are without those perfect future selves we might become to help us sustain ourselves in the faces we see as ourselves, now.
I did not get the memo. I still feel I need role to go out and meet the world. Real is in the house. In the bed. Remember every time I got dressed I wore the same cotton shirt and pants which I washed everyday. Winter or summer for 2 years I wore defiantly the same thing, while I bought all my props to create a life which I refused to live.
How pathetic am I.
I hope so. I have the props. But the thing is, are they for a dream or a reality. How do I decide? What I want to be real? How do I know?I think where we are going as we change is not chosen so much as recovering our lands that were ours to begin with and finding them beautiful and creating, there, something that never was.
I am back to that horrible question:
What do I want? How do I know?
Or we incorporated only our own negatives. I am not sure which it is for me.we were so busy being strong and kind and good and believing so hard we could all do this coming together as family that we never acknowledged or listened to or incorporated our own negatives.
COPA
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